2am Eternal

By Eric Kostiuk Williams. Published by Secret Acres. 

Softcover, 232 pages, Colour and B&W, 2023. 

People and places come and go, but the after-party never stops when it's 2AM Eternal.

Your host, Eric Kostiuk Williams, captures a decade of nightlife in Toronto’s queer community, from basements to the backstage to back rooms. Collecting one hundred event posters from 2012 to 2022, short comics stories, and hand-written notes from the author, the organizers, the performers, and the crowd, 2AM Eternal makes a scene – until last call. The pandemic prompts a series of posters for cancelled events, and a pivot to digital events in the days of lockdown, before the manic, uneasy re-emergence of face-to-face, wall-to-wall living.

FEATURING WRITTEN CONTRIBUTIONS FROM:

Pony Alexander • Jordan Arseneault & Mikiki • Adam Baran • Michael Edward Barry • Jake Byrne • John Caffery • Vic Cheong (aka New Chance) • Keith Cole • Adam Cowan • Linda Felcher • OK Fox • Kay Gabriel • Justin Gray (aka Fisher Price) • Frank Griggs • Kevin Hegge • Jason Charles Hutton (aka Mango Sassi) • Jamal Jones (aka Bliptor) • Jeremy Laing • Cameron Lee (aka Courtney Love Cox) • Reid Millard (aka Allysin Chaynes) • Scooter McCreight • Mingus New • Sean O’Neill • Rachel Parent • Kyle Quinn • James Sime • Valerie Soo (aka Valeroo) • Emma Taylor • Jonathan Valelly • Phillippe Villeneuve • Judy Virago & Igby Lizzard • Brian Wong (aka Gingy) • Fan Wu (aka DJ DJ Intimidator)

PRAISE:

“…a book of party art that summarizes the exhilaration many of us inverts and perverts feel in spaces that were created exclusively for our delectation—safe havens from the dreadfulness and dangers of oppressive hetero life and metastatic Christo-fascism.” - Bookforum’s Best Art Books of 2023

“By linking his lived experience to the ebbs and flows of his clubbing community, Williams creates a unique blend of autobiography and ethnography. A rare feat, this collection informs, entertains, and seduces.” - Publishers Weekly

“Eric Kostiuk Williams’ work has an incredible sense of physicality. Rooms and bodies live, pulse, transform from one thing to another. There’s a fluidity between the tangible and the abstract. At the end of the night, will we return to the familiar or dissolve into the air? I’m so happy this book exists. Toronto is a city that seems hellbent on scrubbing itself of everything interesting about itself. I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that this is an incredibly important document and will probably change a few lives too.” - Jillian Tamaki (Roaming, Supermutant Magic Academy, Boundless)

“2AM Eternal is a record of the preceding decade (2012 - 2022) of the Toronto queer scene, that is part autobio comics, part history lesson and – most spectacularly – part print exhibition catalogue of Eric Kostiuk Williams's promotional and poster art.  Printed magazine size, in (mostly) full color and black and white, this mix of materials really works to create a "you-are-there" feeling and makes for an immersive reading experience.” - Copacetic Comics Company